Friday, September 06, 2013

I'm resurrecting another previously posted post today, and not just because I'm too deep in Bouchercon preparations to do much new posting. My remarks about Eric Beetner's novel The Devil Doesn't Want Meplay directly into what makes his brand of wisecracking, self-aware noir what it is, and I hope they fuel the discussion when Beetner takes part in one of my Bouchercon panels.

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Two gems from my recent crime fiction reading, the first from Eric Beetner's The Devil Doesn't Want Me, the second from Drive, by James Sallis:

"Used to be, in this town, to get anywhere you had to be with the family. You had guys like Sinatra kissing your ring. Now it takes a decent criminal a year to pull down as much cash as Steve Wynn takes in over one weekend of legitimate business."

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"No way he remembered. He’d treated dozens of them in his day. Back in the day, as they said now—and found himself wondering again where that came from. Back in the day. Up in here. You’d never heard these phrases before, then suddenly everyone was using them."

I like Beetner's wry recognition that his Las Vegas is no longer the one of movie and crime-novel myth. Beetner has clearly thought about the nature of twenty-first-century crime even if he would not admit anything so serious.

12 Comments:

Dang, Peter. Thank for putting me in such great company. You'll be glad to know that in the rewrites for the sequel to Devil, I took out a few jokes. Can't say I don't listen to the readers. So glad you have enjoyed my work. Thanks.

May readers make suggestions for your list of "things that drive me nuts"? That is, if they drive you nuts, too...

If so, I would like to submit "going forward" + "at the end of the day" + "my point being" + "...gives 110% every time" (or any inflated figure beyond 100%) + the current president's penchant for "make no mistake" (this has been pointed out to him, and he is trying to cut back on using it).

That's a good list; I hadn;t noticed the president's tendency to use that phrase. If he's trying to use it less, good for him. I get the feeling not many public figures would give such a matter a moment's thought or have their speechwriters do so.

"At the end of the day" may be the worst of the lot because of its frequency and because of the depth the dull speakers think it lends the statement that follows. And I follow sports, so to me, "give 110 percent" has been around so long that it's become a joke.

My candidates for the list: "Defeat is not an option," which is bad on a number levels and might deserve a post of its own, and "passion" when used by corporations, advertisers, and other hucksters.

Hmm, an interesting semantic question. Is the statement "defeat is not an option" semantically equivalent to "defeat does not fall into the category of actions or outcomes that can be considered options"?

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About Me

This blog is a proud winner of the 2009 Spinetingler Award for special services to the industry and its blogkeeper a proud former guest on Wisconsin Public Radio's Here on Earth. In civilian life I'm a copy editor in Philadelphia. When not reading crime fiction, I like to read history. When doing neither, I like to travel. When doing none of the above, I like listening to music or playing it, the latter rarely and badly.
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